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Seneca Falls First Woman's Rights Convention of 1848*

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Seneca Falls First Woman's Rights Convention of 1848* Published in the Journal of Bahá’í Studies Vol. 8, number 3 (1998) © Association for Bahá’í Studies 1998 Seneca Falls First Woman’s Rights Convention of 1848* The Sacred Rites of the Nation Bradford W. Miller [T]he problem is nothing if not that of rendering the modern world spiritually significant—or rather ... nothing if not that of making it possible for men and women to come to full human maturity through the conditions of contemporary life. —Joseph Campbell, The Hero with a Thousand Faces *This article is drawn from the author’s book Returning to Seneca Falls (Hudson, NY: Lindisfarne Press, 1995) and a presentation delivered at the Nineteenth Annual Conference of the Association for Bahá’í Studies, San Francisco, October, 1995. Abstract This article explores parallels between the Seneca Fails First Woman’s Rights Convention of July, 1848, and the Badasht Conference, held in Persia that same month. In the former event, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, who was to become a leader in the women’s suffrage movement for the remainder of the century, was supported by Frederick Douglass, a noted abolitionist and radical newspaper publisher. In the latter event, a conference of the emerging Bábí Faith. Táhirih, an enlightened woman, also introduced the revolutionary feminine in collaboration with a significant man, Quddús. The independence and equality of women is a fundamental precept of the Bahá’í Faith, which is the culmination of the Bábí movement. The comparison is set in a broad frame of reference in which individuals today might face their own coming of age in social, sexual, and racial terms. Résumé Le present article dresse un parallèle entre le premier congrès des droits de la femme, tenu à Seneca Falls en 1848, et la conférence de Badasht, tenue en Perse au cours du même mois. Dans le premier cas, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, qui allait devenir une figure marquante du mouvement suffragiste pendant le reste du siècle, avait l’appui de Frederick Douglass, un abolitionniste notoire et l’éditeur d’un journal radical. Dans le second, une conférence tenue par une foi bábíe naissante, Táhirih, une femne éclairée, inaugura elle aussi ime féminité révolutionnaire avec la collaboration d’un important homme, Quddús. L’indépendance et l’égalité de statut dc la femme est an précepte fondamental de la Foi bahá’íe, qui est elle-même la culmination du mouvement bábi. La comparaison entre les deux événements est établie dans un contexte global qui n’est pas sans rapport avec l’émancipation que les personnes aujourd’hui peuvent vivre aux plans social, sexuel et racial. Resumen Este artículo examina semejanzas entre la Primera Convención de los Derechos de la Mujer ocurrido en Seneca Falls en julio de 1848 y la conferencia de Badasht celebrada en Persia ese misino mes. Durante el primer acontecimiento, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, quién posteriormente encabezaría el movimiento del sufragio de la mujer durante el remanente del siglo, fue apoyada por Frederick Douglass, abolicionista insigne y periodista radical. En el segundo acontecimiento, una conferencia de la Fe Bábí emergente, Táhirih, mujer esclarecída, también presentó la feminidad revolucionaria en colaboración con un hombre, Quddús. La independencía e igualdad de la mujer es an precepto fundamental de la Fe Bahá’í, que en sí es la culminación del movimiento Bábí. La comparación se efectúa dentro de an amplio marco de referencia mediante el cual los individuos pueden encarar su propia mayoría de edad en términos sociales, sexuales, y raciales. t is the First Woman’s Rights Convention, held July, 1848, in Seneca Falls, New York, on which I choose to focus I in the hope that this seemingly secular and local event will yield its symbolic and spiritual significance, even helping to redeem the contemporary life of the American nation, and the world, in sacred Bahá’í terms. Historian of religions Mircea Eliade, in speaking of the attitude of early Christian historians, states, “It is not for its own sake that an event is valued, but only for the sake of the revelation it embodies—a revelation that precedes and transcends it” (Eliade, Images and Symbols 170). He says that Christianity, or any other major intervening religious vehicle, when its time comes, tends to “revalorize” historical events, not denying them, but reinterpreting and often reinvigorating them. In this way, a merely local and even seemingly secular event can be made to reveal a broad, symbolic, universal significance. The Badasht Conference, held in Iran, also in July, 1848, embodied the same clash of elemental themes that were characteristic of the Seneca Falls Convention and which were soon to come to full flower in the Bahá’í Revelation. It is the synchronicity of the Badasht Conference and the Seneca Falls Convention that authorizes this effort to discern the initial shudders of the Bahá’í Revelation in the Seneca Falls Convention. Indeed, I am attempting to show the convention’s core structure as a symbolic, national rite of passage which, like a dramatic religious sacrament, and like the Bahá’í Faith on a world scale, holds for those who come to understand its significance, a transformative, spiritual coming of age. The Seneca Falls Convention In the Wesleyan Chapel at the corner of Fall and Mynderse Streets, the site of the July, 1848, Seneca Falls Woman’s Rights Convention, at least two important events occurred: for the first time ever recorded in American history, a woman (Elizabeth Cady Stanton) publicly demanded the vote, and an African-American man (Frederick Douglass) legally free only since December, 1846, was the only man to support her publicly. The convention’s personification of complex, embedded gender and racial relationships recommends it as a broad frame of reference by which citizens might today face the usually recalcitrant forces of their own identity acquisition, their own coming of age in social, sexual, racial, and spiritual terms. Frederick Douglass, a self-educated, relatively young man of thirty-two, was then emerging as an important figure in the United States abolitionist movement as a lecturer and writer. His very presence at the Seneca Falls Convention embodied a promise of fulfillment for all African-American men, women, and children living at the time under the cruel restraints of the institution of slavery. Elizabeth Cady Stanton likewise embodied a promise of social and personal transformation: the potential emergence of the female half of the population of the United States as self-determining citizens. Although Stanton was more closely associated with the political emancipation of white women, in tandem the two represented the liberation of all human beings from any shackles or prejudices. To put into perspective the degree of the educational and social restraints inherent in society during Stanton’s time, consider that only in 1848 did the first female physician in America graduate from the Geneva Medical College in Geneva, New York, approximately ten miles from Seneca Falls. Not until 1869 would a woman be licensed to practice law in the United States. The writers of the day characterized activist women as frustrated spinsters, Amazons, and a threat to the unity and decorum of the institution of marriage, the family, and the entire social order of the nation (Banner, Elizabeth Cody Stanton: A Radical for Woman’s Rights 46). One writer, Grace Greenwood, described Stanton as having “a comfortable look of motherliness and a sly benignancy in her smiling eyes, even though her arguments have been bayonet thrusts and her words germ shots” (qtd. in Banner, Elizabeth Cady Stanton 123). This is a particularly violent image to describe a woman who was reared to be a model of female decorum in an age of strictly defined sex roles. Certainly neither Stanton nor any of her female colleagues advocated violence. But her writing and speaking were so powerful that they were considered forceful enough to rip and tear, if not destroy, the country’s social, religious, and legal fabric. Wednesday, July 19, 1848, the first day of the convention, was devoted to the reading and discussion of its defining document, the Declaration of Rights and Sentiments and its fifteen grievances; the presentation of eleven related resolutions, including the ninth, authored by Stanton, which demanded for women the right to vote; and the delivery of speeches by Stanton and other women’s rights advocates. The convention approved the Declaration unanimously. Ten resolutions, including the demands for the right of women to personal and religious freedom, the right to testify in court, the right to own property and to claim their own wages, the right to education and equality in trades and professions, equality in marriage and the right to custody of their own children, were also approved without difficulty. The resolution demanding women’s right to vote, however, met fierce resistance. By calling for women’s right to vote, Elizabeth Cady Stanton had struck at the very heart of the oppression of women, making the women’s movement from that point on inexorably political, no longer able to fit neatly under the banner of religious tradition. Even Elizabeth Cady Stanton’s own mentor, Lucretia Mott, had counseled beforehand, “This will make us ridiculous. We must go slowly” (qtd. in Douglass, Frederick Douglass on Women’s Rights 13). Stanton had consulted with Douglass before the resolution was read, asking for his support. When the resolution demanding women’s suffrage seemed headed for defeat, Douglass’s speech on its behalf stirred the audience and swung the vote. Years later, in a statement on the occasion of Douglass’s death, Stanton said: He was the only man I ever saw who understood the degradation of the disenfranchisement of women. Through all the long years of our struggle he has been a familiar figure on our platform with always an inspiring word to say.
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